? Are you unaware of what will happen when the “trust” fund is exhausted?
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.html
The Trustees project that Medicare costs (including both HI and SMI expenditures) will grow substantially from approximately 3.7 percent of GDP in 2011 to 5.7 percent of GDP by 2035, and will increase gradually thereafter to about 6.7 percent of GDP by 2086.
The projected 75-year actuarial deficit in the HI Trust Fund is 1.35 percent of taxable payroll, up from 0.79 percent projected in last year’s report. The HI fund again fails the test of short-range financial adequacy, as projected assets are already below one year's projected expenditures and are expected to continue declining. The fund also continues to fail the long-range test of close actuarial balance. The Trustees project that the HI Trust Fund will pay out more in hospital benefits and other expenditures than it receives in income in all future years, as it has since 2008. The projected date of HI Trust Fund exhaustion is 2024, the same date projected in last year's report, at which time dedicated revenues would be sufficient to pay 87 percent of HI costs. The Trustees project that the share of HI expenditures that can be financed with HI dedicated revenues will decline slowly to 67 percent in 2045, and then rise slowly until it reaches 69 percent in 2086. The HI 75-year actuarial imbalance amounts to 36 percent of tax receipts or 26 percent of program cost.
In other words, Medicare benefits WILL be reduced by 13% and the strain on the budget will increase dramatically.
Medicare is already drawing from the treasury SS is paying out more than revenues the revenues coming (it still has a cushion of interst income on the ious, but that means the general fund is now subsidizing SS). ahead of schedule and the dates for trust fund exhaustion keep moving closer and closer. In order to meet the shortfalls we will have to make deep cuts in other programs or raise taxes to a suffocating level.
Democrats are lying about the economic realities. As are Republicans like Mitt, who claim we can increase defense spending without any real cuts in anything else. The longer we wait the more painful it is going to be.